Wednesday, March 29, 2017

SOLSC 29: Yet Another Political Protest, This One Local

Today I
stood among 25 others in front of Governor Cuomo’s New York office. We were
urging the governor to support an abortion bill called the Reproductive Health
Act. The bill would repeal the current law (part of the criminal code that
permits abortion only up to 24 weeks or when the woman’s life is in danger),
and create a new section of the Public Health Law permitting abortion up to 24
weeks, if the fetus is not viable, or the woman’s health or life is endangered.

This now
gets very complicated. The RHA has been passed by the state Assembly three
times, but the state Senate, controlled by the Republicans, hasn’t yet allowed
it to come to a vote. One complicating factor is that Democrats actually have a
one-vote majority in the state Senate, but a group of Democratic state senators
have formed something called the Independent Democratic Conference, and it
voted with the Republicans to give the Republicans control.

There’s so
much more to this story, but enough politics from me. Instead, what was
exciting for me about this protest was that my daughter, CM, was there with me.
And she not only led became one of the leaders of our chants (in a call and
response: “What do we want? The RHA. When do we want it? Now!”), but she came
up with a fresh chant as well (“Ho, ho, hey, hey, Cuomo, sign the RHA.”)

After
almost an hour, the protest disbanded, vowing to return in a week if the bill
hasn’t been enacted and signed. I expect we’ll be back next Wednesday.